I curated a show: Sense of Self at Xchange Gallery at The Arts Exchange

Aaah! I did a thing I've never done before and curated a show with 6 artists, only half of whom actually live in Atlanta.  Pretty pumped for the opening in two weeks.  More updated, particularly during my first time installing a show with other people's works, as time progresses.  Info about the artists and show below.

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Sense of Self features the work of six artists: Elaine Alibrandi, Elyse Defoor, Elnaz Javani, Kelly Kristin Jones, Grace Needleman, and Iman Person. Through diverse mediums the artists explore the impacts of society, culture, and community on identity and varying ideas of womanhood. Each artist approaches these themes differently, whether exploring their own relationship to the world outside themselves, a specific community's concept of womanhood, or observing general perceptions on the idea of women.

The Arts Exchange Gallery Hours:
Xchange Gallery Thursday through Saturday, 1­5 pm
750 Kalb Street, SE
Atlanta, Georgia 30312

Contact to view by appointment:
404­624­4211 Jessica Caldas
jessica.r.caldas@gmail.com

The Artists:

Elaine Alibrandi graduated from Massachusetts College of Art in in 1981, studied at the New England School of Art and Design, and is currently based in Boston. She finds inspiration for much of her work from nature and female imagery, both of which to her express strength and vulnerability, power, mystery, and creative potential. Alibrandi is also influenced by her lifelong activism for women's rights. While creating art gives her the freedom to express herself personally, politically, and socially, the various media she employs seem to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers.

Elyse Defoor is a multi­disciplinary artist who is inspired by a person’s connection to their inner spirit and unconscious world. From this passionate inspiration, she produces artwork that can be both bold and mysterious yet often playful. Her drawings, paintings, photography and large scale installations have gained international recognition and national exposure. More recently, a collection of over fifty worn wedding dresses has become the basis of an ongoing series of installations, exhibitions and photographs entitled "Relics of Marriage". As Defoor continues to explore the many forms, both hidden and exposed, of the feminine body and spirit, "Shed 6" is a work from the series "After Ever After" which incorporates sculpture and photography.

Elnaz Javani is an Iranian visual artist whose work examines violence, identity and gender issues that underpin her daily life and experiences. She creates sculpture, drawings, photography and installation with
different materials such as fabric, thread, photo and sound .She is studying Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Tehran Art University.

Kelly Kristin Jones is an Atlanta­based artist who earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jonesʼ relationship to photography is flexible as she explores community and culture through photographic documentation influenced by performance and a post­internet approach. Jones is the recipient
of a number of awards including the MINT Gallery Leap Year Artist Award (2013), the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship (2012), The Union League & Civic Arts Foundation Prize (2012) and the Municipal Art League Fellowship (2012).

Grace Needleman is a Chicago­ based artist and educator. Her work questions the meaning and experience of belonging. Through collage, she animates the characters, myths, symbols, and rituals of her family and communities As a teaching artist, she works with the Teen Creative Agency of the Museum of
Contemporary Art Chicago and other youth across the city to explore questions of art in society, participation and invitation, and the museum. She received her MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths and her BA in fine art from Yale University.

Needleman’s work is a collaboration with Elisa Gonzalez, who writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is a current M.F.A. student in poetry at New York University and a 2011 graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in English.

Iman Person is a visual artist based in the Atlanta area. Her use of found materials and environmental consciousness breaths heavy in her work and creates a hybrid reality between physical, ethereal and metaphysical realms. In 2010 she received her B.F.A from Georgia State University and has shown in numerous exhibitions since. She has become a fixture in the Atlanta arts community both in the exhibition
sphere and in public art arenas. She is a member of the Atlanta based collective, Dashboard Coop, is a Hambidge fellow and one of twelve Walthall fellows for 2013­2014.

Doing something different: Teaching a workshop!

Apologies for my woefully outdated blog.

To bring myself back into focus, here, I thought I'd share my upcoming workshop at MINT Gallery (the lovely hosts of my current, and soon to be ending, Leap Year Residency).  Scoutmob reached out to MINT with the idea of hosting a workshop series in October.  Lead by local emerging artists, folks will be able to sign up each week to learn a different skill.  Aubrey Longley-Cook, Chelsea Raflo, Ashley Anderson, Evereman, and I will all be teaching.

I'm teaching flagbooks, which seemed the easiest and most appropriate thing to share with folks in the highly limited time frame (only two hours).

Scoutmob's well written re-write of my idea:

"Wednesday, October 30: Flagbooks with Jessica CaldasThough Jessica primarily works as a printmaker creating large-format narratives like these, her appreciation for all things hands-on and process-oriented extends beyond the printer to the book arts, which she describes as a close cousin to printmaking. Her workshop will focus on flagbooks, a form of deceptively simple but fascinating and dynamic, accordion-like handmade books. Students are encouraged to bring old books, magazines, photographs or any other paper material gathering dust on the shelves that they can transform into a piece of beautiful artwork. (Translation: yes, you can turn those hoarded back-issues of Cat Fancy into something more.)"

I should note, I sent examples of flagbooks I found online and they used those as header images.  I asked them about it, since they aren't my work or my images, but no response yet.  Sorry to the artists who actually made those lovely things.

You can find more information about the classes and sign up here:
http://handpicked.scoutmob.com/atlanta/hand-picked/mint?ref=r1c0

Countdown to the solo show...

Coming up soon at Beep Beep is my solo show, "Falling in..."  I'm not nervous...not one bit.

When: Saturday, March 30th, 7-11pm

Where:Beep Beep Gallery- 696 Charles Allen Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30308

What:"Filling In..." New work by Jessica Caldas

"Just as any love story does, the stories of violent relationships each develop differently. Though a relationship full of love should not be violent there is indeed love. There is a very human hope and belief in love. There are lines of power, control and anger that should not be crossed but they are crossed. Violence should not be hard to see, hard to distinguish, hard to name and yet it is.

When we see violence from an outsider’s perspective and we want to understand it we place ourselves, or those we know, in the moment and we ask “What if it was me?” Why do we have to ask this question? When we don’t want to understand violence we push the stories away from us, and we say “that could never happen to me”. In this moment we are failing to understand that, like love, violence is all around us.

This work visualizes relationships I witness as a Domestic Violence advocate; their development through the cycle of violence, the perspectives surrounding the relationships, and the questions of what happens when love is pressured by violence and control."

All the art things from every direction!

Ah, it's been awhile since I updated this thing here.

A LOT is going on.
First in my non art life I managed to sprain my foot as well as fracture it (I didn't know you could do both at the same time but boom, there it is) while caring for my younger brother and sister on my own for a week.  It's made all the other stuff going on really really interesting.

The Atlanta Office of Cultural affairs Public art program is hosting Elevate again this year and my proposal, which I made along with a poet and spoken word artist Avien Reese, was selected among I think about 6 other major projects.  We're highlighting the work and membership of the organization Back on My Feet, an org I volunteer with and Avien is an alumni of, and in particulars the amazing stories and connections that are made through the organization.  The project is centered around Avien and I creating visual and oral narratives which tell the stories.  I am completing multiple large scale murals (wheat pasted on paper-yay printmaking) around several locations downtown.  It's been daunting because the notice was fairly short and I had to conduct the interviews on my own (in the midst of babysitting two small children)-but the people are amazing and I have no worry that this won't turn out great.  Details for the events and locations are found on the here.

Additionally we are hosting, with Back on My Feet, a run/walk art tour of all the Elevate locations on October 20th.  the membership of Back on My feet is going to be involved and it's going to be excellent and challenging and wonderful.  I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to learn how to collaborate with different groups and make things happen-it's not easy though and I'm not sure how suited I am for it.  But I will learn to love it as it is what I really want to do.

Also as a part of Elevate is Wonder Root's, MOCA Ga's, and Kennesaw State's Imaginary Million event.  100 artists were selected to show their work and will be given an imaginary 10,000 to bid on each other's work.  I'm participating and will actually have two pieces in the show from my DV work earlier this year which is pretty neat!  A bunch of artists I admire and love will have work in the show so hopefully I can grab some pieces I would not normally be able to share.  I'm pretty pumped-I only hope I get to dress up hard core for the event.

 


I'm also in the midst of preparing for my show at the Cube gallery in November.  It's been a bit on the back burner due to Elevate stuff but it should be pretty excellent as well.  The artist I'm showing with is patient and outstanding.

Finally, there's a ton of other stuff I'm sending work out to and applying for.  We'll see what happens with all that.

That's the update, quick and sloppy but I needed to have something here.

Yay!